Scientific Method —

Bill has a long list of brain-melting stipulations.

Each year, state legislatures play host to a variety of bills that would interfere with science education. Most of these are variations on a boilerplate intended to get supplementary materials into classrooms criticizing evolution and climate change (or to protect teachers who do). They generally don't mention creationism, but the clear intent is to sneak religious content into the science classrooms, as evidenced by previous bills introduced by the same lawmakers. Most of them die in the legislature (although the opponents of evolution have seentwo successes).

The efforts are common enough that we don't generally report on them. But every now and then a bill comes along that veers off this script. Late last month, the Missouri House started considering one that deviates in staggering ways. Instead of being quiet about its intent, it redefines science, provides a clearer definition of intelligent design than any of the idea's advocates ever have, and it mandates equal treatment of the two. In the process, it mangles things so badly that teachers would be prohibited from discussing Mendel's Laws.

Although even the Wikipedia entry for scientific theory includes definitions provided by the world's most prestigious organizations of scientists, the bill's sponsor Rick Brattin has seen fit to invent his own definition. And it's a head-scratcher: "'Scientific theory,' an inferred explanation of incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy." The faith or philosophy involved remain unspecified.

Brattin also mentions philosophy when he redefines "hypothesis" as "a scientific theory reflecting a minority of scientific opinion which may lack acceptance because it is a new idea, contains faulty logic, lacks supporting data, has significant amounts of conflicting data, or is philosophically unpopular." The reason for that becomes obvious when he turns to intelligent design, which he defines as a hypothesis. Presumably, he thinks it's only a hypothesis because it's philosophically unpopular, since his bill would ensure it ends up in the classrooms.

Intelligent design (ID) is roughly the concept that life is so complex that it requires a designer, but even its most prominent advocates have often been a bit wary about defining its arguments all that precisely. Not so with Brattin—he lists 11 concepts that are part of ID. Some of these are old-fashioned creationist claims, like the suggestion that mutations lead to "species degradation" and a lack of transitional fossils. But it also has some distinctive twists, like the claim that common features, usually used to infer evolutionary relatedness, are actually a sign of parts re-use by a designer.

The bill eventually defines "standard science" as "knowledge disclosed in a truthful and objective manner and the physical universe without any preconceived philosophical demands concerning origin or destiny." It then demands that all science taught in Missouri classrooms be standard science. But there are some problems with this that become apparent immediately. The bill demands anything taught as scientific law to have "no known exceptions." That would rule out teaching Mendel's law, which has a huge variety of exceptions, such as when two genes are linked together on the same chromosome.

But the intent of the bill becomes crystal clear a bit later when it turns to evolution:

If scientific theory concerning biological origin is taught in a course of study, biological evolution and biological intelligent design shall be taught. Other scientific theory or theories of origin may be taught. If biological intelligent design is taught, any proposed identity of the intelligence responsible for earth's biology shall be verifiable by present-day observation or experimentation and teachers shall not question, survey, or otherwise influence student belief in a nonverifiable identity within a science course.

In other words, equal time for the leading scientific idea and intelligent design, but never mention who the designer might be. And not just equal time, but equal pages; the bill literally mandates that "course textbooks contain approximately an equal number of pages of relevant material teaching each viewpoint." Brattin is at least aware no textbooks actually have anything on "biological intelligent design," so he wants the state to identify "nine individuals who are knowledgeable of science and intelligent design" to create supplementary materials for use until the textbook publishers get in line.

Given this confused mess, the bill probably has very little chance of passing. Still, prior to the passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act, it seemed unlikely any of these bills would become law.

404 Reader Comments

This. Get out and vote. Please. I refuse to believe a majority of any state would consider this a good thing.

and why we have 3 branches of government that balance each other. Far mroe liklely this will be stayed by a court and then overturned before we have the time to vote them out. Once that's done, ethics rules will probably be refined enough to mandate that introduction of doctrine into law becomes an impeachable offense as a violation of their oaths of office, and in some states that allow recall elections that may already be possible, but it;s far more likely the courts will stop this outright (if not the book publishers all refusing to offer said customized texts in the first place making the lessons impossible to teach).

Also, it;s possible that federal education policy might be enacted to make such tactics result in loss of massive governemnt education funding amounts. though the fed can't necessarily mandate national education standards (yet), they have enough budget sway in the states to effectively do so already at least on major issues, just like how NC is screwing itself on unemployment policy risking losing more federal funding then they'll save in state costs with their new abusive policies.

If this was some kind of Intelligent Design theory based on the Islam, Fox News would be all over it.

Doesn't seem to be true. Harun Yahya has been at it for years and I don't recall stumbling across any Fox News coverage.

barberingbob wrote:

Its't it more worth while to have articles like this http://feeds.wired.com/~r/wired/index/~3/QnIaz3L9M7c/ than wast everyone's time with rants? The article itself says that this "bill" isn't likely to pass. At least arguments from the sighted article would be over quotes like the following (if they arise at all) rather than quotes from a politician.“RNA is so perfect today that it has to be the product of evolution,” says Nicholas Hud, a chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in Atlanta.

I'm sorry that Ars is raising awareness about the anti-science campaigns going on across the country. We should probably ignore them, because ignoring problems always makes them go away.

Hey Lemur, if you're still reading? Compare the reliability and effectiveness of science and religion as philosophies when you can get on the Internet through prayer instead of science.

DNA is horrible code. It contains so much redundancy, unused parts, screwed up parts, mixed parts giving rise to mutations and cancer, and a lot of bloat crap that does not do anything and should be scrapped.

This isn't really correct. There is redundancy to some extent, but the idea of "junk DNA" is probably more or less untrue; while a lot of regions are non-coding, they play regulatory functions and removing all of them can indeed have an impact on the resultant organism.

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There are only 4 letters in DNA, but since 2 are always paired together, that leaves only a few possible combinations. That is why DNA has to be so ridiculously long to code for some of the most simple proteins.

This isn't really accurate either. While yes, they are always paired, which is on which side DOES matter - the blocks of three letters are what code for us, and there are 64 distinct ones (4*4*4), not 8 (2*2*2), though there is some redundancy in them.

DNA is ridiculously long, but it actually has absurdly high information density.

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It is ridiculous to come up with it and somehow this is the key to life? Stupid and ridiculous. I am amazed that it worked for "4 thousands years" let alone many millions of years the earth existed.

To be fair, computers are base two; we are base four (or arguably base 64 if you consider that the "real" code is triplets).

Zelannii wrote:

I went to a very good college, one listed as a top 100 school in the nation, top 50 in my field at the time. I also went to a top 10 (public) HS in my state which sent 45% of our graduating class to Ivy League schools and 85% of us received at least partial college scholarships for academics alone.

Wow, sounds like there was a lot of corruption going on there. I went to one of the objectively best high schools in the country and we had nowhere near that level of Ivy School admissions (of course, you could simply be wrong about how many went to the Ivy League... and of course, the Ivy league isn't all that it is cracked up to be, but still). I really have some pretty severe doubts about that rate really.

I never had a problem with religion in any of my classes. Ever.

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Your analogy was if you created it and studied it it could be a science. No, that's a logical fallacy. The study of unfalsifiable hypothesis is NEVER science. Speach pathology and other speach sciences do in fact exist, but simply applying the scientific method to evidence that speech happened is itself not a type of science, nor a field, it;s just an application of the scientific method. IF we then throug the general scientific study of the EVIDENCE of ID (one some fictitious or hypothetical world, since no such evidence exists here anyone has ever found), that might in fact lead to NEW science once a hypothesis or theory is created and then THAT theory is applied to OTHER things.

ID IS falsifiable. You would expect a life form which has been intelligently designed to show certain signs of having been designed. Life on Earth does not show said signs, ergo, we can falsify the ID hypothesis. There are formulations of ID which are non-falsifiable, and those aren't science, but in its most basic form - "life shows evidence of design" - you can indeed falsify it. Indeed, we did quite some time ago. Thus you can say that ID has been falsified and is not a part of science, much like the idea of Aether.

If I went out and seeded a planet with complex life, as ID claims, then said life would show signs of my having designed it. Studying what I had done by some species which arose from that a hundred million years later WOULD BE science, because in that case, the hypothesis wouldn't be falsified, and indeed my creating life on the planet would be rather obvious from the fossil record and genetic record.

Science is ultimately nothing more than the knowledge we gain via the use of the scientific method.

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Science is just science until you take it into APPLICATION, then and only then does it become an *-ology or specific field of study. So, studying my speech is not speech science. Applying lessons and facts learned to modify, understand, or augment speech, or applying speech to new things (like computer operation) then and only then is it speech science. Studing ID is just studying it. Then thrying to buuld a new world, or create experiements that replicate the conditions, that would be ID as a science. No such thing has ever happened, thus is has no place in science class (other than discussing we already alanlyzed the tennants of ID and creationism 150 years ago, and through Evolution, and geological science, proved it was false already.

Chemistry is applied and is not an ology; physics is applied and is not an ology. Studying your speech would indeed be speech science if I did it in a scientific manner. You seem to have a pretty funny idea of what defines science. Application is not necessary for science; astromony is pretty useless from the standpoint of actually making things, but it is still a science.

arcadium wrote:

Doesn't the no exceptions provision eliminate teaching Newton's Laws? I mean, they don't apply at the quantum level...

Firstly, Newton's Laws are NOT all wrong; several of them are indeed correct - conservation of angular momentum, for example, is very much a real thing. The whole "An object in motion remains in motion unless a force acts on it, a motion at rest remains at rest" thing is also right. The specific mathematical formulations of his laws are inaccurate, but are accurate on the human scale and are used by engineers.

You learn relativity after you learn Newton's laws, because relatvity builds on them.

zelanii wrote:

Actually, we do have many "proven" or true scientific facts. in some cases we still have theories as to WHY that is a fact, or to exactly how the the underlying physics work at subatomic levels that make it so, but we can 100% predict and measure the outcomes to the limits of our ability to so measure them. No, not all science is based on probability, some things are accurately measured every time, and didn't need luck or probability to come to those conclusions. Most force physics fall into that category. Much REASEARCH falls into this control/example method of study, but applied sciences are very different from theoretical sciences, and we do truly considered them "facts."

You're wrong. Any scientist will tell you this. You can never, ever, ever, ever, ever 100% prove ANYTHING in science. Ever. You can be 99.99999999999999999999999999999% certain, but that is NOT proof.

The fact that we can predict some things 100% of the time does not, in fact, mean that our scientific theories are "proven". There are always bounds and limits of accuracy and precision if it is not mathematical in nature (pi, e, ect.). Newton's laws, for instance, hold true over a pretty wide range of things to a absolutely ridiculous degree of accuracy; you can't measure deviations from Newton's Laws on Earth without specialized, very expensive equipment. That does not mean that Newton's equations are correct; they aren't. They're just very, very accurate over a good range.

We treat them as "fact" because, for almost all practical purposes, they can be assumed to be accurate. I am an engineer. But for a lot of engineering applications, we use Newton's laws, not Einstein's, because they are close enough and much easier to work with.

If this bill gets passed, the only reasonable recourse is all churches must teach that God May not exist as a possibility by law. Any religion practicing must start with the lines - God - Which May or May Not Exist, which may or may not tell us. Etc.

I think this is a reasonable compromise. They want to teach religion as science. They should teach doubt of god as truth.

I have no idea why it should be wrong or controversial to discuss intelligent design in a classroom

*IF* that classroom is in a parochial school, church, or the home, then that's fine. It becomes a problem when the religious people try to force it on everyone else, and even more so when they're trying to force it by law.

Other than those three places, religion (IMO) has no place in general society, and certainly not in politics.

I received quite an excellent education in evolution (as understood in 1969) in a parochial high school, Catholic in this case. I was also taught the creation story in the bible. They didn't attempt to reconcile them; indeed, we were told the bible story was allegorical.

I received quite an excellent education in evolution (as understood in 1969) in a parochial high school, Catholic in this case. I was also taught the creation story in the bible. They didn't attempt to reconcile them; indeed, we were told the bible story was allegorical.

That's because the Catholic church does not see science as conflicting with their religion; they see both as being correct. If science shows something different from what they THOUGHT religion said, then, why, that's because they're imperfect mortals and they merely misunderstood what religion was saying. Humans are still touched by the divine in their view, but they do indeed see the creation myths as allegorical - indeed, the idea of the Bible as literally having happened exactly as written was commonly accepted a thousand years ago. Martin Luther's literalism was actually a contrast with the Catholic church's position on the matter.

The Catholics have a freaking astronomer at the Vatican. They've had a long interest in science.

As was said by Saint Augustine:

“Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, . . . and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.”

Catholic schools are SUPPOSED to teach science properly. Indeed, the pope has officially decreed that evolution happened and is not in conflict with church teachings.

This doesn't make it any less nonsense, but the Catholics, while they can be accused of many things, cannot really fairly be accused of being stupid. There's a reason they've been one of the most powerful organizations on the planet for the last 1700 years.

Doesn't the no exceptions provision eliminate teaching Newton's Laws? I mean, they don't apply at the quantum level...

Well, since it also eliminates teaching quantum theory, entaglement, and all other forms of quantum science, since they're also poorly understood and highly exception prone, does that mean they're really not exceptions, but just conditions we have not yet understood, or would that then begin a chain reaction undoing hundreds of years of confirmed study boiling science back to the 1600's? Optics, radio sciences, even many aspects of mathematics have exceptions that cannot be accounted for. DNA, mutation, chemical interaction, the immune systems, all of these would be illegal under missouri law then.

That's my point. Until we create a theory of everything, doesn't pretty much all of science have exceptions? And would this law basically ensure that science cannot be taught in science classrooms, and pretty much only a creationist theory, whose answer for everything is God (sorry, unnamed intelligence) did it, the only acceptable one allowed to be taught as science in Mo classrooms?

Doesn't the no exceptions provision eliminate teaching Newton's Laws? I mean, they don't apply at the quantum level...

Firstly, Newton's Laws are NOT all wrong; several of them are indeed correct - conservation of angular momentum, for example, is very much a real thing. The whole "An object in motion remains in motion unless a force acts on it, a motion at rest remains at rest" thing is also right. The specific mathematical formulations of his laws are inaccurate, but are accurate on the human scale and are used by engineers.

I am not saying Newton's laws are wrong. What I am saying is that there are exceptions where they (or some of them) are not correct. For example, at the quantum level.

The article states that the Mo law says that the only "science" which can be taught is that which has no exceptions. As a result, Mendel's Law cannot be taught.

My question is that doesn't that pretty much preclude teaching any science in Mo classrooms? Or am I misunderstanding the meaning/application of the word exception here?

I received quite an excellent education in evolution (as understood in 1969) in a parochial high school, Catholic in this case. I was also taught the creation story in the bible. They didn't attempt to reconcile them; indeed, we were told the bible story was allegorical.

That's because the Catholic church does not see science as conflicting with their religion; they see both as being correct.

Well, the Catholic Church learnt a long time ago (with that argument with that whole Galileo guy) that when it comes to arbitrary belief vs. science, science is almost certainly going to win. And arbitrary belief is going to look foolish after it. To their credit, they did take wise steps towards trying not to fight science, and shaping their beliefs around science, as opposed to in conflict with it.

Well, the Catholic Church learnt a long time ago (with that argument with that whole Galileo guy) that when it comes to arbitrary belief vs. science, science is almost certainly going to win. And arbitrary belief is going to look foolish after it.

We outlawed voter testing because in the past it was used as a deterrent for certain classes or races of people to vote, it was a means to social, racial, or other discrimination, and we had ample proof that was in fact happening... I think at this point we can easily correct for any such issues, and I have long supported re-institution of basic voter testing to counter this issue. I have a very well detailed plan on how to make this happen, cheaply, and securely, and without disenfranchising voters, nor allowing the government to get any information about your voter testing scores from the results, but it;s way too much to get into here.

I propose a 2 part system. Registration requirements and a voting test:1) GED or equivalent gets you full voting rights, no GED and your vote only counts half a vote for each candidate. (this rule will only be imposed 10 years after the rest of the laws I propose below are passed, giving ample time for anyone to get a GED who needs one to have their vote count in full)2) Those receiving federal assistance may only vote for state officials, those receiving state assistance may only vote for federal officials. If receiving both, you can only vote for local politicians and ballot issues unreleated to your benefits. (exceptions for certain medical conditions, and "temporary" situations, aka on assistance less than 12 months of the last 5 years are exempted fro this rule, and obviously SS, Medicare, etc don't count as benefits, we're talking long term unemployemnt, welfare, medicaid, etc). 4) naturalized or native citizen, or a legal immigrant with permanent legal US Status and residency who meets all other conditions and can pass an english speaking exam, and is on a path to full citizenship and who has been paying taxes at least 7 years. 5) not currently suffering from any debilitating mental or psychological illness (once your mind is gone, so is your right to vote, though, provisions to allow proxy voting by your spouse or other legal guardian/caretaker could easily be discussed). 6) never served more than 1 year in prison for a state or federal crime. 7) those enrolled in high school when this is enacted who later drop out without completing school or before age 19 forfeit their right to vote for 10 years, even if they acquire a GED. (exceptions again for family farm labor, joining a family business, etc). 8) not currently back-due on any alimony or child support payments.

The above gets you the right to REGISTER to vote in the current election.

Once registered, you need to pass a simple test at the poll itself. You can take this test over and over until you pass, and 100% of the answers are available on site for you to study and will be printed online and in all local and national papers (you just can't bring a cheat sheet to the actual booth, you must "learn" this information, as temporary as knowing it may last). This test is very simple. You simply need to pick 5 discussion topics important to you, and confirm any TWO your candidate sides with. Yup, if you can simple be 40% right about how your candidate stands on the top 5 issues most important to you, you're vote counts. Can't do that, we'll let you step to the side, study, and try again. Still fail, and you go to the back of the voting line and can try again. over and over you can try until you're right, or until polls close. You can choose to have your vote count for people you got right and not count for others if you want. Also, you can't vote the party ticket, nor are the party affiliations of any candidates visible in any material at the polling location at all. Information you select is not recorded in ANY way, just the votes you successfully made. (we won't be using this as a method for collecting information about what's important to voters or not, nor as a measure of voter intelligence or competency, it's just a litmus test on your and only your vote to make it count or not).

If this bill gets passed, the only reasonable recourse is all churches must teach that God May not exist as a possibility by law. Any religion practicing must start with the lines - God - Which May or May Not Exist, which may or may not tell us. Etc.

I think this is a reasonable compromise. They want to teach religion as science. They should teach doubt of god as truth.

Then the zealots would just proclaim that it's against their freedom of religion and they'd get an exemption from it - like they do most everything else.

Well, the Catholic Church learnt a long time ago (with that argument with that whole Galileo guy) that when it comes to arbitrary belief vs. science, science is almost certainly going to win. And arbitrary belief is going to look foolish after it.

This has been their policy since before Galileo, really; its not exactly a new thing - its why so many monks engaged in scientific research back in the day, because the more you understood about science, the more you understood God's work. Indeed, the main reason that Galileo got persecuted was not because of heliocentrism, but because he basically called the Pope (who was himself an amateur astronomer) a simpleton, in the form of an entire book. It went over about as well as you would expect, especially given that he met with the Pope to discuss astronomy (civilly, I'll note) and then took those same things that the Pope said to him and put them in the mouth of a character called Simplicio. Had he just written a book that said "heliocentrism is how god made the world, and this is why" he would have gotten away with it scott free. Instead he built up a fake dialogue between different world views and the character represnting the Pope's views was presented as a total moron.

So yes, Galileo was persecuted, but he did basically publically call the most powerful man in Europe a dumbass, so it wasn't quite as much of the "Catholic church hates science" as is popularly portrayed, and more "The Pope used his power to screw over a guy who he perceived as insulting him".

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We outlawed voter testing because in the past it was used as a deterrent for certain classes or races of people to vote, it was a means to social, racial, or other discrimination, and we had ample proof that was in fact happening... I think at this point we can easily correct for any such issues, and I have long supported re-institution of basic voter testing to counter this issue. I have a very well detailed plan on how to make this happen, cheaply, and securely, and without disenfranchising voters, nor allowing the government to get any information about your voter testing scores from the results, but it;s way too much to get into here.

The problem is that it would have to be instituted on a federal level, as the Red states would pretty much use those tests to disenfranchise blacks and hispanics, given that they are STILL working hard at disenfranchising people even under the current framework. Not to mention the horrible gerrymandering that goes on.

Honestly if I was going to test people, it would be on basic science and constitutional law.

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4) naturalized or native citizen, or a legal immigrant with permanent legal US Status and residency who meets all other conditions and can pass an english speaking exam, and is on a path to full citizenship and who has been paying taxes at least 7 years.

I'd just make it be a citizen of any sort, really, naturalized or not, and make becoming one easier. If you're here for seven years, you should be allowed to apply for and get citizenship if you aren't a criminal; if you aren't interested in being a citizen you shouldn't be allowed to vote, and if you haven't been approved yet, likewise.

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5) not currently suffering from any debilitating mental or psychological illness (once your mind is gone, so is your right to vote, though, provisions to allow proxy voting by your spouse or other legal guardian/caretaker could easily be discussed).

You have to be able to define this very strictly; being depressed or ADHD is not grounds to deny people the right to vote.

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6) never served more than 1 year in prison for a state or federal crime.

I really don't see why this matters, honestly. The right to vote shouldn't be contingent on your criminal record. If you're not in jail for a felony offense, you should have the right to vote.

The only real exception I see is denying the right to vote to people who committed voter fraud or election tampering or bribery. Ironic punishments are fun.

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8) not currently back-due on any alimony or child support payments.

So basically, no one in the entire state of Alabama or Mississippi.

ZING!

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Once registered, you need to pass a simple test at the poll itself. You can take this test over and over until you pass, and 100% of the answers are available on site for you to study and will be printed online and in all local and national papers (you just can't bring a cheat sheet to the actual booth, you must "learn" this information, as temporary as knowing it may last). This test is very simple. You simply need to pick 5 discussion topics important to you, and confirm any TWO your candidate sides with. Yup, if you can simple be 40% right about how your candidate stands on the top 5 issues most important to you, you're vote counts.

The problem with this is that it is just more or less impossible to do. It would be horribly, hideously expensive to do this, and I just don't think you could do it fairly.

Secondly, it just doesn't work because of vote by mail - I could cheat on vote by mail.

That's why I think just having a simple test you have to pass once every X many years (10? 20?) that is basically basic science, history, and constitutional law is enough.

You'd probably exclude at least 50% of the stupid people in the country by asking the following five questions:

What was the primary driver of the civil war?

What is the first amendment?

What is the second amendment?

What is the fourteenth amendment?

Approximately how old is the earth?

This can be a multiple choice test, even, and I"m still reasonably confident a good percentage of the country would miss at least one question.

I have no idea why it should be wrong or controversial to discuss intelligent design in a classroom (though it seems to rest as many of its arguments in the field of philosophy of science as in strict science), but you don't have to redefine scientific theory to do that. Simply teach it as competing view that people have put forward either in contrast to or in complement to evolution; don't go mucking about with science in general though, you don't even need to.

it shouldnt be talked about in science class maybe a debait club or philosophy class science is there to present documented facts about the world we live in and theory's that actually have evidence.

From what I've read it seems like there's potentially something there scientifically (although I am not sure if you could really get away from evolution altogether, at least if you were sticking with the evidence), but it doesn't seem too far fetched that intelligence may have caused life initially or pushed it along at the times where we see huge leaps in complexity without much precedence (be it biologically, genetically, or geologically). Frankly, it is weird to see the fervor against ID (although, I expect dumb bills like this probably contribute a lot to that). Even if you don't think it took place, I don't see how it isn't a functioning theory or one that cannot coincide with evolution.

It's biggest sin seems to be in departing from philosophical naturalism and the political secularism, or at least in having the potential to let 'dissidents' do so. Honestly, that is what I gathered from my own reading and studying of it, so I can see how people would be more annoyed if the issue was more that ID supporters always propose it as a complete replacement for evolution, as opposed to a compliment, which is fishier.

I'm a parent of a school age child. I don't want her taught "Intelligent Design" in science class any more than I want her taught Latin declensions in art class. It has nothing to do with whatever merits ID may or may not have, and everything to do with the fact that it is not science.

The basics of science are all about coming up with an explanation and trying to break it. You cannot prove something is right, though you can prove something is wrong. Current scientific explanations are ones people have tried and failed to prove wrong.

People supporting ID go the other direction. They see something that is not explained, and they add a factor to the mix, the Designer, and then try to find arguments to support that factor. It's the exact opposite of science, and that's why so many people rail against it.

A divine creator can neither be proved nor disproved; it's a matter of faith, not science, and therefore has no place in science class. Putting ID on the equal footing Brattin requests would be akin to mandating equal time for Swahili in math class.

If I were the leader of China, I would use billions of dollars every year to finance the crackpot-organizations who push ID, and the Republican Party. Because that would be the best way to cheaply undermine the science and economy in the USA.

If you want to prove evolution to politicians, just start knocking off any of them that propose crap like this and you'll soon be left with a breed that fears it's own idiocy enough to keep it's mouth shut once in a while.

Okay, it's time for the scientific community and the secularist community to stop just tolerating this nonsense. These religious nut jobs put a huge amount of money and effort into lobbying and publicity, it's time for a fightback. We need to start getting science a higher public profile so this kind of horsemeat doesn't become what people think is normal.

Do you want your kids taught by teachers bound by a law like this one? If not then you might want to see what can be done about raising the profile of proper science and pointing out all the gaping holes in this fairy-tale science.

But we also need to start pointing out all the flaws in things like the "Here comes the science!" shampoo ads that pedal pure nonsense in the aim of selling more products, because that's seriously damaging. People don't trust science, and the kind of sales pitch that involves pseudoscientific claptrap is a big reason why.

Creepily, that definition is, if you want to split hairs very, very, very finely, technically true.

"an inferred explanation of incompletely understood phenomena about the physical universe based on limited knowledge, whose components are data, logic, and faith-based philosophy"

Science does work primarily through inductive reasoning, the whole point is that it's investigating things that are incompletely understood and based on limited knowledge (if they were completely understood/based on unlimited knowledge, who would investigate them?) and the faith-based philosophy would be the philosophy of science, which does, strictly speaking, rest on certain articles of faith, such as the validity of our sense perceptions to model the world with reasonable accuracy, the validity of inductive reasoning, and logic in general, as ways to discern truth, etc.

Pure sophistry, of course, but what do you expect from people who haven't got a leg to stand on in any sort of rational discussion?

Don't bother in comment threads like this. These commenters are drunk on groupthink. Just look at the voting patterns. You got downvoted because you didn't rageface. They all equate the absence of evidence with the evidence of absence.

ID IS falsifiable. You would expect a life form which has been intelligently designed to show certain signs of having been designed. Life on Earth does not show said signs, ergo, we can falsify the ID hypothesis. There are formulations of ID which are non-falsifiable, and those aren't science, but in its most basic form - "life shows evidence of design" - you can indeed falsify it. Indeed, we did quite some time ago. Thus you can say that ID has been falsified and is not a part of science, much like the idea of Aether.

I agree with almost all your post apart from this. I'm not entirely convinced ID is falsifiable, in its most common guises. Discovering a mechanism (evolution) which is capable of producing complex life renders ID unnecessary and implausible, but does not rule it out. There is no way for us to prove conclusively that, in spite of the process of evolution, God wasn't reaching down into the universe and tinkering. I recently heard a Christian apologist assert that he did accept the facts of evolution, but was simply personally incredulous that something as complex as the human mind could be produced by it. Thus, he believed God interfered at key times to guide our genetic development. This, to my mind, falls under the ID umbrella, but is not falsifiable. As Lauren Krauss once said, (paraphrasing) I can't prove that we weren't all created 40 seconds ago complete with false memories of all of recorded history. That doesn't make such a belief sensible.

I think for this reason, it's very difficult to argue the question of ID could ever be formulated in a scientific way. Whilst, as you indicate, one might expect to find indicators of design, one can never objectively test whether those indicators are really likely to be design, or whether they are just the result of a natural process. The whole argument just seems to rest on personal incredulity.

Btw, I'm no proponent of ID. I'm a theoretical physicist (well, i was a few years ago anyway ). I'm arguing against ID here as much as it looks like i'm leaving a get-out for creationists. In truth, it is patently and demonstrably irrational to accept any hypothesis you can think of which is unfalsifiable. When having this sort of conversation with religious colleagues, I often challenge them to believe me when i claim to have had magic breakfast cereal that morning which allowed me to walk around on the ceiling for 30 minutes. They can't prove I didn't, but to believe me on faith would be absurd.

Strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

faith-based means you can back it up by what you believe, not what you have evidence for.

His point was that you could argue empiricism as an epistemology is the leap of faith on which science is built. Every logically complete system starts with an axiom, and science starts with the axiom "experience reflects reality". I agree that questioning that assumption is a big leap in itself, and it just goes to show the extent to which modern theologians have to go to try to undermine science (i.e. as far as questioning all external knowledge), but to be fair to the original poster, he did say it was pure sophistry.

Indeed, comparing the sort of "faith" we, as scientists, have in empiricism, to religious faith is silly and childish. It's hardly in the same ball-park. And every theologian i've debated on this topic is an empiricist too if they break a leg or stand on a high ledge.

I'd be intrigued to see it added to a science curriculum, as with scientific thought and process it'll soon be shown not to be a science. And maybe this what needs to happen, otherwise the narrow-minded religious zealots will continue ad infinitum

(disclosure: I am a foreigner, reading this with considerable alarm from abroad)

What worries me with this kind of reports is that I don't believe the politicians proposing this kind of billsare operating in good faith. I think they are probably literate, and of at least average intelligence, and hence must be going against their own sense in these proposals. The purpose would be to mobilizethe " 'science' is just another opinion"-crowd behind them, the growing bloc of voters who are ignorant (=uneducated) and who find their ignorance and world-view validated by these vile demagogues.

The solution -if there is any- must be in education. I guess most ARSTechnica readers would agree.The concept " science is just another opinion " *must* be destroyed in people's minds. -by teaching scientific method so people can come to this realization by themselves.

I'd be intrigued to see it added to a science curriculum, as with scientific thought and process it'll soon be shown not to be a science. And maybe this what needs to happen, otherwise the narrow-minded religious zealots will continue ad infinitum

The problem with that is, the science curriculum is not concerned with the act of performing science on a day to day basis. It is concerned with (or should be concerned with) teaching established science and the scientific method. It is for that reason that ID has no place in the science classroom. It is not a scientific hypothesis, there is no evidence in favour of it, and there is a lot of evidence in support of a competing theory, which has been established to be as close to "true" as scientifically possible. The idea that it is some alternative to evolution is the one which is so poisonous. The only thing which could replace evolution, is a theory which more accurately describes nature, for which there is a greater evidential basis. ID is not in this camp. It's a "theory" espoused by people who don't want evolution to be true, because they can't reconcile it with their religious faith. That's not science.

From what I've read it seems like there's potentially something there scientifically (although I am not sure if you could really get away from evolution altogether, at least if you were sticking with the evidence), but it doesn't seem too far fetched that intelligence may have caused life initially or pushed it along at the times where we see huge leaps in complexity without much precedence (be it biologically, genetically, or geologically). Frankly, it is weird to see the fervor against ID (although, I expect dumb bills like this probably contribute a lot to that). Even if you don't think it took place, I don't see how it isn't a functioning theory or one that cannot coincide with evolution.

It is very simple ... here is the definition of a scientific theory:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory"A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment."

Evolution is "a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment". Life forms do change over time, they do evolve. The Theory of Evolution is "a VERY well-substantiated explanation of the fact that life forms do evolve".

Hence, the Theory of Evolution is indeed science.

Intelligent Design is nothing like this. There is absolutely no evidence that life is designed, and considerable evidence that it simply isn't designed. The primary evidence for the life not being designed is (1) vestigial organs, and (2) features such as the blind spot in vertebrates (vs the octopus eye) which would be "design errors" if they were in fact designed.

Hence, Intelligent Design is NOT science. Intelligent Design is NOT, in any sense, a functioning theory (the complete lack of any evidence of a designer, or any design, is alone enough to disqualify ID as a scientific theory). Intelligent Design is instead a well-and-truly debunked hypothesis. Just like Alchemy or Astrology, there is no place for teaching Intelligent Design in a science classroom.

ID IS falsifiable. You would expect a life form which has been intelligently designed to show certain signs of having been designed. Life on Earth does not show said signs, ergo, we can falsify the ID hypothesis. There are formulations of ID which are non-falsifiable, and those aren't science, but in its most basic form - "life shows evidence of design" - you can indeed falsify it. Indeed, we did quite some time ago. Thus you can say that ID has been falsified and is not a part of science, much like the idea of Aether.

I agree with almost all your post apart from this. I'm not entirely convinced ID is falsifiable, in its most common guises. Discovering a mechanism (evolution) which is capable of producing complex life renders ID unnecessary and implausible, but does not rule it out. There is no way for us to prove conclusively that, in spite of the process of evolution, God wasn't reaching down into the universe and tinkering. I recently heard a Christian apologist assert that he did accept the facts of evolution, but was simply personally incredulous that something as complex as the human mind could be produced by it. Thus, he believed God interfered at key times to guide our genetic development. This, to my mind, falls under the ID umbrella, but is not falsifiable. As Lauren Krauss once said, (paraphrasing) I can't prove that we weren't all created 40 seconds ago complete with false memories of all of recorded history. That doesn't make such a belief sensible.

I think for this reason, it's very difficult to argue the question of ID could ever be formulated in a scientific way. Whilst, as you indicate, one might expect to find indicators of design, one can never objectively test whether those indicators are really likely to be design, or whether they are just the result of a natural process. The whole argument just seems to rest on personal incredulity.

Btw, I'm no proponent of ID. I'm a theoretical physicist (well, i was a few years ago anyway ). I'm arguing against ID here as much as it looks like i'm leaving a get-out for creationists. In truth, it is patently and demonstrably irrational to accept any hypothesis you can think of which is unfalsifiable. When having this sort of conversation with religious colleagues, I often challenge them to believe me when i claim to have had magic breakfast cereal that morning which allowed me to walk around on the ceiling for 30 minutes. They can't prove I didn't, but to believe me on faith would be absurd.

Using the methods of ID proponents, ID is falsifiable.(1)Life is too complex to arise without an Intelligent Designer(2)An Intelligent Designer capable of designing life is too complex to arise spontaneously.(3)An Intelligent Designer capable of designing an Intelligent Designer is too complex to arise spontaneously(4)Therefore there is no Intelligent Designer.(This kind of argument is likely the reasoning for a total and absolute ban in that law on any discussion, question or answer involving the Designer)

Of course the ID community takes arguments 1 and 2 and reasons that although (extremely primitive) life is too complex to arise spontaneously, the existence of life proves that an Intelligent Designer capable of creating the modern universe can arise spontaneously out of random matter.

Unintelligent design has been tested independently of biology.This article titled "On the Origin of Circuits" includes an early example in the fieldBe sure to click through to the University of Sussex page on the ongoing research (link at the bottom of the article)